E3 2019 Talk back

[dschroll]

It's our favorite time of year again. Lots of gaming news.

I watched the MS Conference and I had to say it was probably one of their best conferences ever, albeit a bit too long.
They had a nice diversity of games and topics to talk about.
It's obvious though the MS is less focused on selling you an XBOX and more selling you XBOX Game Pass. They'd rather selling a monthly subscription than a box with some games on it. I also thought it was a bit of a mistake talking about the next generation XBOX. I mean, Xbox 1 X came out not that long ago. Wasn't it supposed to be a game changer and do all this cool stuff? Seems like all that is moot now and they're talking about how revolutionary the next XBOX will be. No doubt it will be awesome, but I'd be pretty upset if I was an XB1X owner.

What did everyone else think?

[fatty]

I watched the MS conference a bit late and just now finished watching the Nintendo Direct.

MS is really pushing that Game Pass. I have a few 3 month gold cards and almost fell into the hype of buying some more Gold to take advantage of the $1 ultimate pass deal they had going on but passed knowing I probably wouldn’t take advantage of actually playing it too much.

Yeah, not only does XB1X not seem like it has been out for awhile but this generation of consoles seems like it is really just now hitting its stride so to see new consoles coming out next year seems early to me.

That Xbox Elite controller 2 looks pretty sweet...until I saw the price. I guess that is what kept me away from the previous version but only way I see myself getting one is if I can get a very sweet deal, I goes for the price of a 3DS.

No games really blew me away though, never cared for the Gears franchise but Cyberpunk 2077 looks interesting. But I’m so behind that I have more interest in other games that I still haven’t gotten around to like BOTW.

I will post my thoughts on Nintendo tomorrow...but that BOTW 2 teaser looked nice. I gotta play the first one!!

[reaper]

I watched the MS and Bethesda conferences and read about the Nintendo conference. I also watched the Star Wars game stream. Here are few thoughts:

Some of the games seem irritating to me. I get the revenue model is changing. But I find it irritating that characters in games have about 50 accessories hanging off their bodies. It just feels to me like an obvious set up to sell kids outfits for these characters rather than designing a cool looking character for your game. Does this:



Remind anyone of this?



Anyway...

At the MS conference I thought Cyberpunk still looked good but I am unsure whether I will play that game. It may be too gritty for me. It does look cool though. Dying Light 2 and Eldin Ring looked good but I may also pass on both. I Am still working on Sekiro and frankly... don't have a lot of time these days for games that are hard enough to make me replay sections over and over again. There is fun in that though... so I may get sucked in. If you have a pulse, you had to find some joy in the Lego expansion for Forza. What a cool concept... tops the hotwheels concept from last year! Gears 5 and Halo looked interesting but I kind of need to be convinced there. Getting a little tied of playing the same games over and over. Halo didn't look all that amazing to my eye given the long discussion about the power of the next xbox. Flight simulator looked great but I wonder if that slow paced gameplay will hold up in today's age. Minecraft Dungeons looked like a lot of fun for me and the kids or them and their friends and I am still drooling over the next Ori game. The next xbox sounds good but I was hoping they would announce more... like price, launch date, a look at the box, something more tangible. Overall, great conference though.

The Star Wars stream was very disappointing. I didn't see anything in that game that wasn't already in Star Wars: Force Unleashed. It is unfortunate because based on some reading, I understand the game does have a lot to offer... they just didn't show it. So, I will keep my eye on it but that vertical slice kind of sucked, imo… walk here, use light saber, walk there... use light saber and force push... rinse repeat.

Bethesda. I just beat Doom 2016 and really enjoyed it. So, I am feeling kind of stoked for Doom Eternal. It looks like they've ratcheted it up to 11! Lots of well done apologies for Fallout 76... needed to be said. Still not feeling too interested in Fallout or ES: Online. I was super excited when they announced Commander Keen. Nerd boy, Joe, played that game a lot as a little kid. Then I saw what they did to it. Tragedy . Ah well. Overall... Doom good... rest... meh. Wish they would have said something more about ES VI or Starfield. It's getting ridiculous that we have to wait over a decade between game releases. It's bad enough as an adult. But think of that in kid years. Half a childhood passes waiting for the next one. Weak sauce.

Nintendo. I am planning to buy the Zelda: A link to the past remake. That game looks beautiful. I read it runs like crap right now. So, I hope they get that ironed out before launch. Pretty cool they announced a sequel to BotW. I should probably finish the first one sometime. My daughter and I play it super casually. We have the master sword and probably can fight Ganon now but we just keep exploring and doing quests and challenge rooms. It became a lot more fun to me once I started using a map app to help us find those challenge rooms. Nothing much else caught my fancy there.

Overall, good E3. I wish Sony was there. They left a gaping hole.

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